WASHINGTON – The Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative (PCPCC) has launched a new Center for Accountable Care. The goal, according to PCPCC officials, is to help ensure that a “strong, robust patient-centered primary care model is at the foundation of accountable care organizations nationwide, and that programs and policies related to ACOs help maintain this focus.”

The PCPCC is a coalition of more than 700 major employers, consumer groups, organizations representing primary care physicians and other stakeholders who have joined to advance the patient-centered medical home.

Based on a survey of PCPCC membership, the new center will focus on identifying and making recommendations on regulations and policies to advance the success of ACOs with a strong patient-centered medical home foundation. At the core of the PCMH model and ACOs is healthcare information technology.

The new center will identify best practices around the establishment of PCMH-centered ACOs, and educate and advocate to multiple stakeholders (governors, other state officials, advocacy/consumer organizations, the media, federal officials) its policy recommendations.

"Passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has provided an opportunity for healthcare organizations to structure ACOs, but many questions remain about the role of the medical home within these new payment models," said Edwina Rogers, the PCPCC's executive director. "This new center will serve as a guide to help healthcare leaders establish primary care and the medical home role firmly within the ACO."

Blair Childs, Ted Epperly, MD, Dana Safran and Craig Sammit, MD, will serve as co-chairmen of the center.

Childs is senior vice president of public affairs for the Premier healthcare alliance. Epperly serves as program director and CEO of the Family Medicine Residency of Idaho and clinical professor of family and community medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He is also past president and board chairman of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

Safran is senior vice president for performance measurement and improvement at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts and also serves as associate professor of medicine at the Tufts University School of Medicine. Sammit is CEO for the Dean Health System in Madison, Wis., one of the largest integrated healthcare delivery systems in the country.

“The Center for Accountable Care will help build consensus among a wide variety of stakeholders regarding regulations and strategies to advance a more integrated, coordinated and accountable healthcare structure,” Childs said.

Sammit agreed. “There is an imperative for the healthcare industry to evolve from an uncoordinated, volume-based and inefficient system to one that is accountable, reliable, patient-centered and value-based,” he said. “Redesigning and reinvigorating our primary care model will be a critical driver of delivering better care at a lower cost, and the PCPCC's Center for Accountable Care will play a critical role in this transformation."

The PCPCC is organized to advance the PCMH, the centerpiece of its efforts to transform healthcare on a national level. It represents the nation's business leaders, consumers, primary care physicians and other healthcare stakeholders who share that goal.

“Our experience demonstrates the critical importance of primary care at the core of any organization that assumes accountability for overall quality, outcomes and resource use for a patient population,” said Safran.